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Teri-Denise: 00:00:02

Hello there.

This is Terry Denise, a Lansing Community College student and your host of Ripper, an LCC Connect podcast where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in around and beyond the community of Michigan's capital city. Hello. Well, how is everybody out there today as the Terry Denise on Ripper through LCC Connect. It has been quite a day.

I am just getting over the hump of not feeling very well and I've got some gripes. So not grapes. I've got grapes.

I was looking for cold medicine not once but twice and felt that the I haven't actually bought cold medicine in a very long time because I usually have my own remedies that I do and my remedies are like not available anymore. I don't know for how long the time being. There's usually this juice that I'll get that. It's ready made, you can go grab it.

It's a product that comes in like a glass bottle. So it's from a company that gets distributed across the nation and whatnot.

But I can usually find it and apparently it has gone missing from the shelves. Usually when you start seeing a closeout or mass clearance pricing, then that's like, oh, this product might not be available anymore for very long.

So this is a particular kind of juice that I love. It's not just a juice though. It's an echinacea lemon ginger juice. Okay? It's the best thing in the world.

It's one of those comfort items along with tomato soup or something like that. It's just one of those things that helps clear things up and helps drive whatever's going wrong in my body out.

And for whatever reason this thing is, I can't find it anywhere on the shelves. I mean, I only looked in a few places, but I didn't look everywhere is what I'm trying to say.

But while I was looking online, nothing was popping up in any other of the zip code areas that are adjacent. I even went as far as to look at other adjacent cold still regions like Chicago and yada, yada, yada, and I did not find. It was just not there.

So I went to the website of this brand and looked at some of the reviews and it was just like nothing but like four to five stars on this particular drink. And I'm like, I know, I know. I already know that that's one of the best. And then I started reading some reviews and they said, not available.

Why not available anymore? I can't find it anywhere.

And I was like, oh, we Wanted the like, last regional spots where this thing was even being distributed at all because all of a sudden now we don't have it. And I'm very worried because some of the ingredients are like, you know, I mean, you got. Honey, you got echinacea.

So actually, I don't know, maybe some of these things are getting too expensive to even have these mass distributors even manufacture these things anymore right now. And I'm actually kind of worried.

But that's just when these are those times where we all hone in on where our great grandparents had this skill set that was coming off of the wartime. And it's like, you gotta make your own darling. You know, you just get out of bed, jump into something, you know, it's time.

It's time to make things work. It's time to make it all work. We have to make it work or the world isn't gonna work for us. We've gotta work for the world.

You know, it's just one of those things where you gotta. Oh, okay. For whatever reason, with me personally, that's a snap too. Like, I legit have that drive within me.

I don't know, it's not that it doesn't necessarily come from any particular parent or anything like that. It's just my own particular drive. That's weird. Actually. It's weird to other people.

I've noticed the strange pull at motivation for when it's like, oh, okay, I can't count on anybody right now. Okay, well, I must be pulling myself through. I didn't realize I was counting on people at all in the first place.

So having that kind of certain awareness about, so where can I find the echinacea, you know? Oh, okay, well, I can't find it. Just ready grown and everything like that. Okay, well, where are the seeds? Where is the soil?

What kind of is the best soil? What is the ph balance of the soil I need? What is the best water? What is the best kind of sunlight?

Should it be in the east, should it be in the west? Should it be in the northern or southern sun?

You know, once you start gardening, you understand that there are some places that things should not be in the sun for or everything's gonna die or not grow the best. So, yeah, you start going through these factions of like, how to do things and how to diy. Well, where are the books then? If I.

If nobody can tell me where and I can't find anything online. Where are the books? Because there's obviously books written. Somebody wrote about this at some point in Time took pictures about something.

And yes, people do. People have. And that's where you can. Farmers almanacs are treasure troves. If you can find almanacs. I have a couple of almanacs that I've sourced out.

Some of them are actually just specifically for the Astros, the cosmos and everything like that. Whether it's just where the sun is going to be, you know, where the sun placements are going to be, or where the moon is going to be.

And then you go on to like, well, what should I grow during this time? And it's like, well, actually, because the sun levels are going to be like this, typically they're peaked around this time.

So it's a good time to plant sunflower seeds maybe about four weeks out from this particular kind of sun that's coming, because that's when they'll grow the best or something. Or if you have ones that are already sprouted, this is the time of the year that you would want to plant and everything.

And that's based on tradition. That's based on oral tradition. It's based on people, like taking their little notebooks out and going like, oh, I see.

And dedicating some portion of their daily lives to writing out and observing and recording and then handing that on to others and going like, oh, hey, I just noticed that over here the soil is. It needs toiling a little bit more than a couple years at a time or something like that. But it's only that one patch.

And in that patch we just so happen to grow sweet potatoes or something like that. So I noticed that sweet potatoes particularly need this kind of regular toileting.

Other than not the shards or something that are growing over there, the Swiss chard. It's just a lot of that stuff is the things that have kept us alive as humans.

Because really, humans, what are we, what are we out in the animal world, in the kingdom of animals? We are very weird, strange looking creatures.

Have you ever looked at other mammals or other species and then looked at yourself and are just like, what. How did we though, what did we do to do this, to be this? We're very, very like, we don't have shells. We don't have, like, fur. We might be ha.

But we don't have, you know, coats of thick fur or anything like that. We're really just like out here all on our own. We're kind of like very raw out here.

You know, as beings, you know, we've taken it upon ourselves to make sure that the progenitors, the next of our kind can take some knowledge and put that to use and go like, hey, for the very bare minimum of what you get from us, here's a couple of things that you might remember on how to survive. Maybe, I don't know, try. I actually over Covid the lockdown that we had because we are in the state of Michigan, so we are under great lockdown.

And many of, I want to say my kind, I don't know how to put it plain. I'll put it plainly. There's four letters that were hitting into on the generational scale that we have been, I guess, inundated under.

There's the last letters of the Alphabet, X, Y and Z. And I'm right there smack between the X and the zed. And we are just the generation Y. And I often wondered why they named us Generation Y.

Is it because you think we whine all the time or something? I don't know. Are we always asking why? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with asking questions?

How else am I going to find out how to grow echinacea for this product that I can't find on the shelves anymore? How else am I going to make my own?

You know, I love the product, but now I've got to rely on my own ability to try to make and suffice and think of my own that won't hopefully kill me or something like that or make me sick. That produces the same or better quality of a response and reaction out of my system. No, really, the millennials are technically generation Y.

And people don't say that anymore. And it's really strange because all I hear all the time are X, Zed or Z.

And then Alpha, which is the very, very next generation, which is already underway, doing things. I don't even know what they're doing anymore. They're being loud, which they should be because they're kids. They should be out playing and being loud.

And I'm glad. I'm glad they're out on their bikes. It seems like Alpha has gone the way of being very exuberant about being outside and playing outside.

And like, there are things, why am I in here? Why am I in a caged box? I need you to be outside being wild and loud. And it's like, absolutely. Thank you so much.

So, yeah, this oral tradition coming through, you know, the gates and everything like that. For whatever reason, during COVID many of my generational kind got into a lot of gardening and canning and collecting of things.

I mean, this was obviously an anxietal reaction, but it's not a bad reaction. It wasn't a bad reaction because many of us went into, okay, it's time to plan, strategize, and definitely we're not going the way of Y2K. You there?

I'm not gonna buy, like, you know, 50 boxes of beans or anything like that and store them till now. No, not gonna do that. I'm gonna learn how to grow the beans, and then I'm gonna store them myself. That's what I'm gonna do.

Because what if we don't have these cans anymore to put anything in? What if we can't go to the store anymore? I'm just going to learn how to do this myself. Thank you. So we're looking for old recipe books.

We're sharing things online. This is when a Pinterest, like, took. Took off. Etsy took. Took off. And what.

They were already things that people were sharing online and everything like that. But, man, lots of quilting, lots of makers of a lot of different kinds of things. It's just like, I'm brewing things. I don't know what's going on.

It's like the. The days of the yonder, and it's like, yeah, we're like our great grandparents. Great grandparents, children or something.

They say things skip generations. They say certain things skip generations.

I hope it's the best of the best, because if that's what it was, I am very appreciative to my ancestor generations for passing those things on, the Farmer's Almanacs, those great recipes, this skill set that just suddenly comes out of you, out of nowhere, how to know how to dress up a dish or something like that. It's like, how did I know how to do. I don't know how I knew how to do that. I'm just going for a taste or something.

But for the most part, these are great things to hone in on.

I think that learning how to make this drink, it's going to be one of these things that I'm going to get into over this, over these next few months, because what else am I going to do? A bunch of schoolwork? Yes. Actually, I'm going to be doing a lot of schoolwork. I'm going to be very, very busy.

But I'm looking forward to, you know, like, being able to, I guess, put in place those things that are not helping or that I can't find right now. You know, there's this draw that I had to a particular artist.

Sometimes once in a while, it's just like, it's all I'll listen to and that it's a band called Queens of the Stone Age, Coatsa. Whatever you want to call them. And one of the songs that they have is called Fair Weather Friend.

believe it came out in, like,: 2013

And while I was looking it up, I was like, oh, wow, there's a. Not only the phrase, but I was looking up the song itself.

And when you plug in and there's the algorithm that comes out, there's a bunch of different songs named Fairweather Friend, both with Fair weather as one word and as two words. So there's actually multiple lists that you have to find and you have to scrounge under. It.

Just so happen that a few of my favorite artists have a song called Fair Weather Friend or Friends. Queens of the Stone Age was one of them, Johnny Gill was another, and then Johnny Cash had one.

I'll go over some of those lyrics here in just a second.

But Fair Weather Friend, I'm not going to take a direct quote from a dictionary, but it means that those that aren't there for you, unless everything is, like, great and grandstanding and perfect and just without an issue. So when you've got problems, it's just like, where's everybody at? Where is everybody? Why can't I find anybody?

When I'm like, down in the dumps, I feel like I'm always the person that's like, how are you doing? Is everything going okay with you?

And then when it's like, all of a sudden, I realize at times, who asks me that I had to stop a few years ago and just start wondering. I'm like, does anybody ever ask me the things that I ask them? It wasn't, in a way that was coming from a narcissistic thing.

It was from going to therapy and realizing that I hadn't had people ask me questions about myself in a very long time, maybe ever in the way that a therapist asks questions or a counselor does. And you have to sit there and you have to scrounge. And I'm like, the only way that I've ever felt like this is when I'm in theater.

Not only when I'm just doing theater, but when I am character developing. What am I? What am I? What is my character asking for? What am I trying to set up here? What's the vibe? Where's my character coming from?

And Then trying to transcribe who your character is, coming up with your subconscious levels and your unconscious levels and your conscious levels of what you're going to be taking to the stage or in front of the camera, simply where you're going to bring to the surface yourself. If I'm performing or putting on a show or singing something, what are the lyrics that I'm driving for here?

What is the ending and what's the beginning and what's the middle? What is this built of? Who are you? What are you feeling?

Like all these questions that I'm, like, used to doing, developing for a character, not that it's easy, but when you get into the practice, and that's the craft of that art, it becomes one of those things that's just. It's a part of why you have learned the process that you're in. So you do these things, and you love it.

And when I had to sit there and answer questions personally about myself, I'm like, there's not a character that I'm putting on here. I have to seriously question myself, and I have to use verbs and adjectives about who I am as a person. Scary. This is quite frightening.

And it took me a while to actually get to the point of things, but it also took me a second to go like, you know when you're sitting there with a therapist and you're going back and forth, and you're like, no, that is not how I'm feeling. When there's somebody there that's suggesting, well, I'm pretty sure this is how you're feeling. You're like, no, no, actually, I disagree.

And that's part of the therapy is, like, making sure you know that you are honing in on exactly what you're feeling and using our language. You know, we've got the English language here in America that for the most part, I am using with others and letting them know.

But there's some times when I'm like, get into the Yiddish, and I'm, like, feeling verklempt, and I'm gonna let a person know I'm feeling verklempt right now. You know, there's. There's other words in other languages, of course, that you can grab from and everything like that.

But for the English psychological language field, there are these certain subsets of modes and everything that you'll put into focus.

So when I'm describing how I'm feeling about a particular thing, I'm just like, it's not loneliness I'm feeling, but I am wondering, like, why There's a therapist here. Why there's this person that's getting paid to, like, ask me these questions, but I do this to other people, and I'm not doing this for money.

I genuinely want to know how they feel. I genuinely want to know that people are okay and everything. And then I started to wonder. I'm like, but nobody's asking me these things.

But nobody's sitting here talking with me and letting me know exactly that they feel the same way or I don't know. And then I had to go with that. And it's just like, well, I just don't know. I don't know what's going on in their lives. They too have that.

I mean, many people just have families and I don't. We grew up, most millennials, our generation, why and everything.

We're grown, you know, I have to reach back and had to like, lean back, I guess you could say, because I don't have the kind of kids that they do. I don't have kids at all. I don't have a marriage. I don't have. I'm not a divorcee. I don't have any of those things. I'm not just a person.

But I don't have to think about asking other people these things in my lives that I see day and night all of the time coming in and out of my life. So they are the ones that were coming in and out of my life. So I had to ask myself, and I'm like, am I being a fair weather friend?

I'm like, you have to get into this area where you're just like, am I the one that's not answering people? And it's like, yes, yes, right away. Text, sometimes not calling people back. And it's.

That would be stemming from a very, I have to say, millennial generation Y thing where it's just like, it is coming to that point where it's like, I know you're busy. I'm only going to ask you to speak with me about certain things. When it's like, desperate.

When it's like, hey, we need to make sure we're on the same page about this thing. Because I know you've got your like 40 hour to 80 hour work week, and I don't want to add to your stress level while I already have my stress levels.

So if it's something that I personally need, I will let you know. And same for you to do to me.

I know that's where we're at with a lot of things, but it's like, has that been one of the things that's hurting us all and making everybody go like, hey, I need to let you know that you're a good friend and I love you and I would be hurt if you're not in my life anymore. And then there's the people that aren't like that in your life, and those are the people that are fair weather friends.

They don't feel that way about you. They don't care if you are not here tomorrow. They might tell people that, but the ones that are genuine about it don't have to tell people at all.

Because they already know. Because you already know. It's already there.

It's in your heart for the Queens of the Stone Age Lyrics Is there anyone out there it starts out with or am I walking alone When I turned around and found that you'd gone before the first rain could fall the thing I love about the way that Josh actually the writers of this song were Michael Schuman, Mark Lanegan, dearly departed Dean Fertitta, Josh Hamm, and Troy Van Leeuwin. And before the first rain could fall that is working on a pun.

And not necessarily it's not a pun of the funny nature, but it's working with the the weather, fair weather, which goes into another area of if it's nice outside, if the weather is fair, then the sailors would put up their sails and go like, hey, let's go sailing. Let's go out here. That's where the fair weather thing comes from.

So then that became a language to use for how you feel with another friend or with another being as at all part of that getting healthy moment. It's not just a mental health thing. It's your emotional health, it's your physical health. It's all of it.

When all of those things start aligning and coming together into a great place, then you just understand that it's going to shape up to be something that's beyond what you can really grasp onto. In a way, that's a good thing. There are these areas of life where you'll find a connection with others.

You'll find a shared bond, you'll find that self connection with yourself and that self reliance with yourself. And that's that place where it's beyond being a fair weather to yourself even, or to other people around you. I'm gonna stop right here.

I'm not gonna be a fair weather friend. I'll be back with part two. And this is Ripper with Terry Den. Thanks for tuning in to Ripper.

You can find more about this and other LCC connect podcasts@lccconnect.com.

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